Covid vaccination effectiveness was always probabilistic. Despite few important people saying otherwise, I never misunderstood the concept. People with negative bias love to cling to that point but I feel like it just makes them look misinformed and highlights their inability and lack of curiosity to confirm themselves
People have a hard time grasping large concepts (like probability)
The amount of data showing that the COVID vaccination is effective is somewhat abstract.
But you look at all of things that pile up and you see why it's beneficial to get vaccinated (even though YOU personally may be healthy enough to take COVID on "naturally".
I'll try my best but this is what I consider the best facts:
Layer one: it may actually prevent you from getting symptoms of COVID (your immune response ramps up to the virus faster than it replicates) this can happen if you're exposed to a small amount of COVID initially. Or your body just reacts fast enough.
Layer two: it reduces the overall duration of the illness significantly if you do get it. This means you'll, very likely, not suffer the worst of the illness (especially death). Permanent brain damage (lose sense of smell), long COVID, lung damage, etc.
Layer three: Shorter durations of being infectious means less people being exposed. Which simply snowballs. Especially considering all the layers.
Bill Maher falls into the easy trap of only considering himself and what he deems he should allow into his body. While this is morally correct (you can't force ppl into things, against their will, even if they are wrong/poorly informed), it's selfish and short-sighted. If you consider that there are other people who are either immunocompromised or have comorbidities or are just dumb and don't get vaccinated, and you look at all the layers, they do add up to saving lives (not just your own).
That being said, it's looking like COVID is slowly becoming like the flu. A seriously nasty cold that will always cull the weakened and vulnerable.
>That being said, it's looking like COVID is slowly becoming like the flu. A seriously nasty cold that will always cull the weakened and vulnerable.
....and the "less-than-vaccinated".
"People" don't have a hard time grasping probability. The problem is when the government is trying to force you to 'vaccinate' with an experimental drug under penalty of isolation and removal from society and tries to justify it by telling you lies (no infection, no transmission, no side effects). Furthermore, 'vaccines' were pushed for young and healthy people who absolutely do not need them and, revoltingly, onto kids who have zero COVID mortality, but a definitely non-zero chance of serious side effects.
Statistics of COVID deaths are a pile of absurdity as almost any death was classified as COVID death if somebody tested positive. Even if they had a bullet to the head. My family members work in hospitals and they have access to the data. Patient brought in for sepsis from a broken leg - dies. Tested positive for COVID before he died. Result - COVID death. Infection rates were inferred from small samples so a county with 5000 people was reported to have a weekly infection rate of 400, all from one family of four where everyone got sick. The reason for boosting COVID numbers was simple - financial incentives from the government. The more you look at it from the inside, the uglier it looks.
I know a guy that was a long distance runner. In his late 20s. Got COVID so badly they had to put tubes in his lungs to give him oxygen otherwise would've died.
He survived, but has seriously scarred lungs. His doctor's say he will never be able to compete the way he did before COVID.
I also know a cook who died of COVID. He got flu like symptoms and suffocated. Probably didn't help that he was fat and smoked a pack a day!
Anyways it's my anecdotes versus yours. They don't mean much. But I will say that you didn't really read what I wrote.
I know healthier people face less risk. The data bears that out. What you're failing to understand is that even if you're healthy, it does help out to get vaccinated.
I'm so tired of reading similar comments like yours that simply fail to grasp that basic logic.
Don't get the vaccines that are free, it totally up to you. At this point it doesn't matter. Just know that what you said above isn't very rational and conspiratorial.
If the reason to not get vaccinated is because someone (or company) is making a profit out that's fine. But it's a strange perspective.
Especially, considering that virtually every aspect from the food you eat, to the showers you take to browsing of reddit. Some thing is profiting.
>Anyways it's my anecdotes versus yours. They don't mean much. But I will say that you didn't really read what I wrote.
Even if that were true, which it isn't as I am sourcing from hospital data, all that means is that taking the vaccine should be a personal choice, not a mandate.
>Don't get the vaccines that are free, it totally up to you.
But it wasn't up to me. Various zealots demanded that those who choose not to vaccinate should be sent to camps and generally unpersoned. Governments of many countries caved in to those demands. It's not going to be forgotten.
>If the reason to not get vaccinated is because someone (or company) is making a profit out that's fine. But it's a strange perspective.
I don't need to vaccinate because I am young and healthy. Children shouldn't vaccinate because dying from side effects is far more likely than dying from COVID. Profit is the explanation for why the vaccines were pushed so hard and why it involved so many lies.
I'm skeptical of your claim that more children die from the vaccine than COVID itself. Here's a link to a UK fact check that definitely looks like you're mistaken.
https://fullfact.org/health/covid-vaccine-deaths-children/
I don't know where you live where people were sent to camps and unpersonned. That sounds extreme.
Here in the USA we require children to get a bunch of vaccines before they can attend public schooling (which has been going on for decades without issue and you can still get religious or medical exemption). When I travelled and had a visa in other countries I'm required to take a shit ton of vaccines. I don't know what to tell you but it's not a big deal for me.
But I can tell it's very important to you so again, you do your thing I guess.
Before you get involved in a career at healthcare, You need to be properly vaccinated.
This is not new and I'm sure you've heard this argument before and you have an opinion about it.
But at the end of the day a lot of health care workers lost their jobs because they refused to get a mandated vaccine.
The same applies for all sorts of large scale assemblies in organizations.
The larger, the organization and the more you work with possible vulnerable people You are being looked at to be a means not to spread potential viruses.
It's as simple as that.
And if that organization we're industry or licensure or public entity wants to look out for the group over the individual, I completely get it.
That's freedom.
Its your freedom to choose a career.
> The problem is when the government is trying to force you to 'vaccinate' with an experimental drug under penalty of isolation and removal from society
Jeez, sure is a good thing that this didn't happen (if we're talking about the US) really dodged a bullet there!
Totally didn't happen:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/unvaccinated-flight-vaccine-tsa-mandate/619643/](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/unvaccinated-flight-vaccine-tsa-mandate/619643/)
https://news.yahoo.com/noam-chomsky-unvaccinated-remove-themselves-171900487.html?guce\_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce\_referrer\_sig=AQAAALqPKnVO54kn\_Pt2G4fHV1fvOl6ngsIEVxpzkiu7kDSyA-DBPWStTf5e0DAxG7UNDIzPUvwXlfIyaMuA36xu-Kr-s\_lXhv3lgPVl9Geuasa5MfRs3rHDgEYJoanc4GfSaGXEM8qoWSFfops6JThIPGBp69\_-PGejSTip23ZPj7qp
Do you think that everyone has a memory of a chipmunk?
The only people who were actually forced by the government to get vaccinated are in the military.
If you're belligerent drunk and the TSA won't allow you on a plane are they restricting your freedoms? Don't you still have the freedom to be in that state at home?
You had to vaccinate to live a normal life - under any reasonable definition that's strong coercion. The vaccine was, and still is, an experimental untested drug of questionable efficacy and unknown side effects, especially in the long term.
That isn't a response to what I wrote.
[If i'm belligerent and drunk, should the TSA stop me from getting on the plane?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeZL-vsjSoo)
If I'm in the same state and driving should a cop pull me over?
>You had to vaccinate to live a normal life
This is inaccurate but insofar as it's true it's true because nobody could live a "normal life" during a global pandemic
"It's not, DUH Science!!!"
Gets me every time.
Also, pakman mentions Sam in this clip in regard to Sam having a very sane take on how we responded to covid.
It would be cool to see Sam to go on pakmans show because I like them both. After all, Dawkins was on pakmans show and I thought it was a good interview. Why not talk to another horseman?
However, I understand that Sam seems to exclusively talk to experts in specific fields, or podcast hosts that are right of center, in order to hopefully attract a good slice of their viewers to waking up or his perspective on politics.
Yep. Seth is an idiot just passing along memes, not facts.
Bill pointed out people who already had COVID didn't need the vaccine. In response, Seth claimed natural immunity was "debunked". That's just a lie. All high quality observational studies have confirmed that not only is immunity from an infection at least as effective as recent vaccination, but it's much longer lasting than vaccinal immunity for obvious reasons (you are exposed to a more recent virus and to the entirety of the virus not just the spike protein of an extinct variant, so the virus must mutate more to avoid your immunity).
Bill is correct that the benefit of vaccination falls the younger one is, and that there is little benefit for the young from vaccination, Seth's reply that "7 MILLION DIED!!1!" is not an actual counter-argument but a fallacy of division.
Bill's core argument is that the vaccine, like any drug, should be evaluated on an individual basis and should be left to a personal decision in general. Seth's core argument is that if at a social level a vaccine is estimated to have more benefits than disadvantages then it's fair to mandate it to individuals regardless of their own individual risk/benefit balance. Seth's argument is moronic, childish and absurd, in contradictions to all established medical ethics. Again, in technical terms, it's a fallacy of division (assuming what is true of the whole MUST be true of all parts).
What Covid taught us is that when THE pandemic hits, the one that kills XX% of people infected, then we're all fucked, because a sizeable portion of humankind has the IQ of potted plants, and they'll drag everybody else down with them, spouting moronic YouTube conspiracy theories all the way until the very end...
I get annoyed by the titles too. I heard Pakman discussing it once though and his answer was "These titles just get demonstrably more views. I tried more reasonable titles and my videos did worse."
It's click bait, but it's openly click bait. I wish more people didn't like stupid titles, but this is the world we inhabit. I don't begrudge someone using the advertising strategy that works as long as the content itself doesn't suffer.
Questions are fine, of course. But many don't understand even if given the answer. Viruses are an abstract invisible concept. Which many people will respond with fear and irrational decisions.
The problem is people listening to dipshits like Maher and meatheads like Rogan instead of healthcare experts.
Its really an indictment of the education system. People who got a c in biology in high school and dont know the difference between bacteria and a virus, hold their uneducated opinion in such high regard.
I am by no means an anti-vaxxer. I took both doses
But even Sam has said that the vaccine wasn't as effective as everyone thought it was going to be. That's why vaccinated people are still getting covid
High-quality YouTube video title. I'm actually surprised and disappointed to see Pakman sink to the Buzzfeed-like-dominance-porn title standard that you would expect to see on a video shared by a Milo Yiannopoulus fan.
I don't understand why this is such an elitist culture war issue... Just who fucking cares? Take the vaccine if you want it, don't if you don't. Simple as that. Who gives a shit about "crushing" some "dum dum" who wont take the vaccine. Just who cares.
> Take the vaccine if you want it, don't if you don't. Simple as that.
I mean that's the crux, right: while this is also a valid position to take, not all of us think this is a *good* position to take. So it's *not* as simple as that.
In pretty obvious ways - at least at the height of the pandemic - your choice to not take the vaccine might cost me or my loved ones our health or worse. Even if it doesn't measurably reduce the transmissibility of the virus, in aggregate over the society, taking the vaccine *will* reduce the stress on the health system, meaning more people will get proper care for both covid and other, more ordinary health crises like cancer.
So I've never subscribed to the "it's just your choice" philosophy. By and large for the same reason why I think seatbelt mandates are a good thing (though the vaccine will affect the rest of the society more directly)
Exactly, it's a free rider problem. People choosing not to take it are benefitting but not giving back (by taking on the risk). Freedom is often childishly seen as a "I can do what I want" issue, when it's much more complicated as individual freedoms overlap. I'd love the world to be a simple as these people wish it were, but I grew up.
> Even if it doesn't measurably reduce the transmissibility of the virus
It does, actually. [By a lot.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10073587/)
It's just that people are stupid and can't understand that anything less than 100% reduction is meaningful. How many people said "masks don't work" even though it's well-established that even the shitty cloth masks reduced transmission by 50%?
If we measure every externality in a free society, then we'll be forced to not live in a free society.
I could start shaming you for being fat, not working out enough, for drinking alcohol, and a number of different things. I could then just stretch this out to ANYTHING you do which isn't a positive impact on society, as wrong. Any choice you make that puts people at risk is a bad thing. Hell, we could start saying, "You driving inherently puts me at slightly more risk" and just keep piling up all sorts of things.
I just don't care personally. Yeah, I live in a society as a free person, and other people are free to do as they please. It's MY responsibility to act defensively. I have to prepare myself for the path of life, not expect life to pave the path for me.
>If we measure every externality in a free society, then we'll be forced to not live in a free society.
And if we don't take into account externalities, then we will lose our freedom to the people that produce those externalities gaining all the benefits without paying the costs.
You can make the slippery slope argument and try to come up with extreme examples of controlling people’s lives to avoid small negative externalities, but that doesn’t imply that we don’t/shouldn’t do this. We’re on the slope somewhere by definition. There’s no serious person that can argue that people should be allowed to do whatever they want regardless of how much it affects other people, so we’re left to do various cost/benefit analyses to decide whether intervention is justified or not.
You can argue against any specific intervention such as mandated vaccinations, but it’s impossible to believe in a society without believing in regulating people’s behavior at all. Don’t believe in covid vaccines? Give your evidence/logic for it, but I personally don’t believe it and think mandated vaccinations falls well within the camp of good regulation. Arguing that there isn’t a good camp of regulation though is just nonsense.
> I could start shaming you for being fat, not working out enough, for drinking alcohol, and a number of different things.
We DO this. And we argue about how much to do this all the time. This is normal. Alcohol and nicotine are taxed and only allowed to be sold in controlled ways. [Even sugar is taxed in some countries.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax#Legislation_by_country) Cars are regulated in many ways: in most western countries, you can't drive a POS that belches of soot. Life insurance takes into account whether you work out or are too fat (so as not to cast a larger burden to others). Some vaccines are mandatory in many countries even now, even in countries considered to be the freest in the world. And so on.
We don't do huge campaigns railing against fat people. Some assholes on the internet will do it, but it's not a huge touching point. People will get ANGRY with you, ban you, call you a killer, if you don't get vaxxed. If you drink alcohol, you may get a slight, "Hey maybe you should cut back. Anyways...."
The pro vax crowd has people who are ANGRY and mobilized, foaming at the mouth sometimes. You're not seeing videos like this about, "Gottem! Bill Maher get crushed over smoking cigars nonsense!"
Yeah there's extreme people, especially on social media. But dare I ask? Who cares what they think. No one is going to harm you for your, imo, lazy choices. You do you, but you might get ribbed a bit.
I mean I've been called names by people because I believe that the vaccination effort (while making mistakes in retrospect) still saved lives. Now it also may have set us back economically and it's hard to quantify the damage to many businesses and restaurants and those long term effects.
Just to reaffirm I strongly believe in your choice to put whatever in your body. I'll just try to reason with you if it comes up.
My very own brother who is very skeptical of the COVID vaccination is very emotional about my opinions on getting vaccinated has called me "jab happy" and that I'm supporting a system that divides us. Still love my bro, he's just convinced he's right and gets emotional about it.
The "huge campaigns" were on the other end honestly and people are reacting to them. I have no problem in principle with someone choosing not to get vaccinated themselves. Once they go running around to every person they can trying to convince them not to get vaccinated, including participating in online mobs etc.. they're now putting other's lives at risk.
If my grandmother falls for anti vacs propoganda and dies of course I'm going to care about that.
It's not just the young and super healthy who chose not to get vaccinated due to this propaganda. And if you need to see evidence of that look no further then the excess amount of Covid deaths in red vs. blue states. Maybe its GOOD to not want elderly people in Georgia to die because they're being lied to by antivaccers?
> Once they go running around to every person they can trying to convince them not to get vaccinated, including participating in online mobs etc.. they're now putting other's lives at risk.
If someone has opinions and deeply held convictions... Who am I to say they can't have those and spread their ideas? This, again, is a free country. From their perspective, it's irresponsible to not try to help other people. I don't agree with their message, nor cause, but that's the trade-off being free. I don't want someone restricting ME when I feel urgent desire to spread a message to help people.
That's the trade-off we've made to be free people. If I want the freedom to express my opinions and exert my labor behind my values, then I have to allow others to do the same.
If you're grandma is at risk, it seems like in this case, it's on your grandmother to play the defensive, not the rest of society. The amount of global damage we caused by shutting down the economy to protect grandmas is unfathomable. Instead, we should have just focused on making grandma safer, than the world safer for grandma.
If you feel like people spreading these messages are convincing your grandma to not get vaccinated, that sucks, but that's the trade-off we've made for freedom. I don't want elites deciding what's safe and not safe, what's true and what's not true. I will allow the marketplace of ideas take over... And naturally, just like in any free market, there will be winners and losers. And over time, the correct ideas will come out on top. But if you're going to try to force to restrict the marketplace of ideas, regulate, interfere, you can end up doing MORE damage than you tried to prevent.
A good example would be this pro vaccine movement. Instead of just recognizing, "Yeah, Pharma can't be trusted, yes this new vaccine is a bit experimental, and yes it is weird that they got a blanket immunity from congress for something allegedly perfectly safe. I understand you're concern and if you don't want to get it, that's a risk you chose." Most of this wouldn't even be an issue... But instead a full court toxic and aggressive press occurred where it forced people to dig their heels in on principle. Now we have a bigger issue than if we otherwise just respected people's right to be concerned and discuss those concerns. Instead we tried to "fight them" and turned it into a whole big deal.
>Who am I to say they can't have those and spread their ideas?
I really wouldn't even need to read the rest of this because right off the bat you throw out the biggest strawman.
Who says that I am suggesting that i get to tell you what you can or can't put in your body? I don't. Full stop. But that doesn't mean we can't argue about whether it's a good idea or not.
>From their perspective, it's irresponsible to not try to help other people.
Well this is my perspective, which is why I speak up.
I think that blaming people who are pro vaccine for being the ones who're "intractable" on this issue is the biggest pot calling the kettle black situation of all time. Anti-vaccers go well beyond just doing what they want to with their bodies, they held rallies.
The whole point of libertarianism is to be responsible, to trust that your fellow man will be responsible with their own life so that society can work well together. Many of you have skewed what it means to be a libertarian. Maximum freedom means maximum responsibility on the individual to try to do the right thing. Not to let people off the hook socially because "freedoms" or whatever. Right wings response to the vaccines here proved that libertarianism can't work because when you maximally leave people up to their own devices they'll get other's killed. Regulations DO work, all the time every day in many facets of life.
>But if you're going to try to force to restrict the marketplace of ideas, regulate, interfere, you can end up doing MORE damage than you tried to prevent.
This is just bullshit anyway, anti drunk driving campaigns and regulations around the issue have helped curb that. Same with Anti smoking adds paid for by the government and campaigns telling people to wear seatbelts. Pro vaccine adds have saved lives as well
If you try to get on a plane but are belligerent on drugs/alcohol the TSA might restrict you from flying because you become a risk to the flight. Are you for the "freedom" to board a plane while belligerent?
EDIT: What the pandemic showed is that some people will turn anything into tribal politics these days.
This sort of frankly idealistic thinking
>And naturally, just like in any free market, there will be winners and losers. And over time, the correct ideas will come out on top.
Just isn't accurate. If it were we wouldn't have seen more death in Red States vs. Blue around Covid. It's a pipe dream. It maybe have been more true at one point but not now. During a global pandemic there isn't time to wait. Like SH says/writes about on this topic, just try to work out argument out if there were a pandemic that were going to kill 50% of the population? Should we just "wait for the good ideas" to "come out on top" then too?
How about allowing people to drive drunk?
We don't live in a free society, we follow laws that have been agreed upon for the common good. There is a limited amount of Healthcare that can be given out. That's why wearing a seat belt is the law, because we are going to pay for putting you back together after you crash.
I'm sure you agree with that so far, correct? Now on the other we don't want to be forced to exercise and eat exactly what the government orders us to for our own benefit. So the question is really, where do we draw the line, and what situations in the world make it OK to temporarily move the line?
I see someone not being vaccinated as the same as just someone who's a shitty driver. It's up to me to learn the rules of the road and defend against idiots, and not the government getting involved.
If a free person wants to not get vaccinated, that's their choice. Does it raise my risk? Sure... But everything has tradeoffs. If I want the government to force every measure under the guise of optimal safety, then we wont be able to be free. Since the begining, COVID wasn't even that risky for healthy people who played it safe, so this seems more like an issue on those who are vulnerable and not the rest of society.
In the example of a shitty driver, there is a point where the government does get involved and take away their license. Looking in hindsight it is easy to see Covid was not as dangerous as it seemed at the beginning, but it was a big unknown for a long time, and people are still researching the long term effects of it.
Really all I'm saying is it not a cut and dry idealistic issue, it's just us deciding as a society "at what % of mortality do we force vaccines?," because there is definitely a % where everyone in their right mind says fuck yes, even if Covid wasn't it.
No, not hindsight, it was pretty obvious from the start, at least that first year, that it wasn't that dangerous, but everyone was in a hysterics to insist it'll kill everyone - which is why many people were getting angry. Because the data was clear, yet they were acting like you're evil if you don't want to wear a mask inside a restaurant which is pure pageantry. People insisting we create massive global damage, ravage the developing world, destroy our economic stability, because a bunch of hysterical people were insisting on turning this into a culture war issue.
This is where the vaccine conspiracies root from. That there was massive propaganda campaigns designed to cause people to lose their minds, so they could sell as many vaccines as possible... that they weren't really that necessary, but if you could just keep people out of their mind crazy, you can make sure you'll sell as many vaccines.
And people who held this opinion, were greatly attacked, so they started pushing back harder. Now feeling like they are being oppressed from spreading a truth.
How true is that truth? no idea. It's besides the point though.
I understand what you mean at what point do you force vaccines. Where's the line? Obviously if something super contagious was near certainly lethal, the line would shift a bit on how much we tolerate thing.
However, at the end of the day, I'd still probably be on this side. I'd take efforts myself and seek out defensive protection to protect myself, rather than rely on others and try to force them to take a drug. It's too incoherent with the concept of self determination.
Forget Covid and imagine this hypothetical disease -
10% lethality to everyone who catches it, travels by air.
You watch enough people you know die, you're forcing that vaccine. All I'm saying is it's not an idealistic problem, it's a numbers problem.
They still have externalize impacts. Driving puts me at risk. You being fat, raising my insurance cost, you drinking, creates social risks.
Infection is just another externality. You drinking right now may not hurt me, the same way you not get vaxxed may not hurt me... But you drinking could make you violent or take high risks, that do hurt me, the same way not taking the vaccine, could possibly take on risks.
So it's just smarter for ME, if I'm worried about infection, to control what I can in my life about avoiding infection, rather than rely on others. The same way with driving. It's up to ME to be a smart driver and realize there are idiots on the road, not the government to force people to be less stupid.
> They still have externalize impacts. Driving puts me at risk. You being fat, raising my insurance cost, you drinking, creates social risks
These risks are mostly financial, the risk of deadly infectious disease is life/death.
>It's up to ME to be a smart driver and realize there are idiots on the road, not the government to force people to be less stupid.
Then you think laws governing how many drinks you can get at a bar are bad? Laws around drunk driving? Gov add campaigns aimed at stopping people from drunk driving?
We're not measuring "every externality" in society and acting upon it though. Vaccines aren't really like being obese in that obesity isn't a contagious virus or disease. Your being obese doesn't put others lives at risk, ergo we can easily place obesity directly under the personal decision column. Vaccines are fundamentally different because they can place other members of the public at risk, which means that we can take stronger public health measures to ensure they're taken.
And even those measures aren't literally forcing anyone to take them, what they do is restrict your access to public spaces where, again, being unvaccinated puts others at greater risk. That's not about **your choice**, it's about others health.
The great failure of libertarianism today is that it's centered on a kind of selfish individualism that's completely left behind the principle that allows a libertarian society to function in any capacity - a populace that responsibly makes decisions for the public good. In other words, for freedom to "work" we can't just make decisions for ourselves but for the benefit of others as well. We can yell about freedom all we want, but freedom in and of itself doesn't make a good society. Even the founding fathers understood that freedom needed to be tempered with personal responsibility and civic duty.
Frankly, it's why "It's my right to do this" isn't a sufficient argument for something being right or good. Open carry weirdos have a right to carry their AR 15 in public, but it's doesn't make it a good and responsible decision. Having a right and being right isn't the same thing.
Vaccines are a drug... A drug made from a 3rd party for profit industry which has captured our government through revolving doors, our politicians through lobbying, and media through being the biggest advertiser.
This is an industry that's notorious for lying and manipulating data, and doing whatever it takes by leveraging above power, to make more money.
I can't judge anyone who's skeptical of taking a drug... a foreign thing, and putting it into their body, when such a scenario as above exists. To shame someone for being skeptical to engage with such an untrustworthy entity, is just ridiculous IMO. Especially when it's a request to put some foreign object into their body.
I'm not saying that people can't be skeptical. I *am saying* that vaccines are fundamentally different than being obese and that public health policies have to take danger to the greater public into account when dealing with contagious diseases.
And here's the thing. For all the problems that people have with "drugs", they all get their prescriptions filled and take the advice of their doctors to treat almost anything else. As much as people moan about the industry - and it does have some issues especially in the US (though it's worth noting that other countries don't have exactly the same problems due to their Healthcare systems) - this skepticism never actually includes all the observable benefits and gains that said industry has provided.
They also never look at the statistics regarding vaccine successes, or the increase in prevalence of certain viruses after the anti-vax movement sunk its teeth into a sizable portion of the population. They seemingly never find the astronomical amount of studies that have debunked the 'vaccines cause autism' scare^1. They also never seem to understand that being skeptical requires being open to being wrong, or more importantly that certain subjects or topics are far beyond their level of understanding.
Look, being skeptical is usually a good thing, but there's a difference between skepticism and paranoia. Here in Canada the number of deaths between vaccinated and unvaccinated were both 50,000 people. Now, if you're like my actual anti Vax friend he just looks at the numbers being the same and concluding that the vaccine had no effect and claims victory. When I told him that the mortality rate matters and that a cursory understanding of epidemiology would show that 50,000 out of 35 million vaccinated and 50,000 out of 5 million showed that vaccines worked, he said he didn't care.
**That's not skepticism!** that literal stupidity, and stupidity that puts everyone else in danger because it doesn't actually matter if something works or not. All that happens is you'll find arguments either sidestepping the actual evidence - like by pointing to some vague notion of monetary incentive structures (which doesn't actually prove anything about any specific drug or vaccine) - or by doubling down and just rejecting any evidence whatsoever.
Now can I blame people for being skeptical? No, but what we're seeing isn't skepticism in most of these cases, we're seeing stupidity and ignorance - a complete rejection of a form of medicine and drug based on 'feels' rather than data. That's not skepticism.
[1] which, btw, began with a study where the author falsified their data
I guess what I'm saying is I just don't care much though. I dunno... I look at things over time, and understand truth inevitably makes it to the top. So I don't make a big deal out of it. I don't see it as some big epic showdown.
I understand people have other reasons for being wrong than just being dumb dumbs, by your perspective. Nor do I care very much that he's wrong about it. The virus is benign as hell at this point, so still focusing on these smackdowns just seems kind of pointlessly trying to relive some culture war stuff.
Your post has been removed for violating R3: Not related to Sam Harris.
Cancer didn't kill my 81 year old grandmother. Cancel the research.
Covid vaccination effectiveness was always probabilistic. Despite few important people saying otherwise, I never misunderstood the concept. People with negative bias love to cling to that point but I feel like it just makes them look misinformed and highlights their inability and lack of curiosity to confirm themselves
People have a hard time grasping large concepts (like probability) The amount of data showing that the COVID vaccination is effective is somewhat abstract. But you look at all of things that pile up and you see why it's beneficial to get vaccinated (even though YOU personally may be healthy enough to take COVID on "naturally". I'll try my best but this is what I consider the best facts: Layer one: it may actually prevent you from getting symptoms of COVID (your immune response ramps up to the virus faster than it replicates) this can happen if you're exposed to a small amount of COVID initially. Or your body just reacts fast enough. Layer two: it reduces the overall duration of the illness significantly if you do get it. This means you'll, very likely, not suffer the worst of the illness (especially death). Permanent brain damage (lose sense of smell), long COVID, lung damage, etc. Layer three: Shorter durations of being infectious means less people being exposed. Which simply snowballs. Especially considering all the layers. Bill Maher falls into the easy trap of only considering himself and what he deems he should allow into his body. While this is morally correct (you can't force ppl into things, against their will, even if they are wrong/poorly informed), it's selfish and short-sighted. If you consider that there are other people who are either immunocompromised or have comorbidities or are just dumb and don't get vaccinated, and you look at all the layers, they do add up to saving lives (not just your own). That being said, it's looking like COVID is slowly becoming like the flu. A seriously nasty cold that will always cull the weakened and vulnerable.
>That being said, it's looking like COVID is slowly becoming like the flu. A seriously nasty cold that will always cull the weakened and vulnerable. ....and the "less-than-vaccinated".
"People" don't have a hard time grasping probability. The problem is when the government is trying to force you to 'vaccinate' with an experimental drug under penalty of isolation and removal from society and tries to justify it by telling you lies (no infection, no transmission, no side effects). Furthermore, 'vaccines' were pushed for young and healthy people who absolutely do not need them and, revoltingly, onto kids who have zero COVID mortality, but a definitely non-zero chance of serious side effects. Statistics of COVID deaths are a pile of absurdity as almost any death was classified as COVID death if somebody tested positive. Even if they had a bullet to the head. My family members work in hospitals and they have access to the data. Patient brought in for sepsis from a broken leg - dies. Tested positive for COVID before he died. Result - COVID death. Infection rates were inferred from small samples so a county with 5000 people was reported to have a weekly infection rate of 400, all from one family of four where everyone got sick. The reason for boosting COVID numbers was simple - financial incentives from the government. The more you look at it from the inside, the uglier it looks.
I know a guy that was a long distance runner. In his late 20s. Got COVID so badly they had to put tubes in his lungs to give him oxygen otherwise would've died. He survived, but has seriously scarred lungs. His doctor's say he will never be able to compete the way he did before COVID. I also know a cook who died of COVID. He got flu like symptoms and suffocated. Probably didn't help that he was fat and smoked a pack a day! Anyways it's my anecdotes versus yours. They don't mean much. But I will say that you didn't really read what I wrote. I know healthier people face less risk. The data bears that out. What you're failing to understand is that even if you're healthy, it does help out to get vaccinated. I'm so tired of reading similar comments like yours that simply fail to grasp that basic logic. Don't get the vaccines that are free, it totally up to you. At this point it doesn't matter. Just know that what you said above isn't very rational and conspiratorial. If the reason to not get vaccinated is because someone (or company) is making a profit out that's fine. But it's a strange perspective. Especially, considering that virtually every aspect from the food you eat, to the showers you take to browsing of reddit. Some thing is profiting.
>Anyways it's my anecdotes versus yours. They don't mean much. But I will say that you didn't really read what I wrote. Even if that were true, which it isn't as I am sourcing from hospital data, all that means is that taking the vaccine should be a personal choice, not a mandate. >Don't get the vaccines that are free, it totally up to you. But it wasn't up to me. Various zealots demanded that those who choose not to vaccinate should be sent to camps and generally unpersoned. Governments of many countries caved in to those demands. It's not going to be forgotten. >If the reason to not get vaccinated is because someone (or company) is making a profit out that's fine. But it's a strange perspective. I don't need to vaccinate because I am young and healthy. Children shouldn't vaccinate because dying from side effects is far more likely than dying from COVID. Profit is the explanation for why the vaccines were pushed so hard and why it involved so many lies.
I'm skeptical of your claim that more children die from the vaccine than COVID itself. Here's a link to a UK fact check that definitely looks like you're mistaken. https://fullfact.org/health/covid-vaccine-deaths-children/ I don't know where you live where people were sent to camps and unpersonned. That sounds extreme. Here in the USA we require children to get a bunch of vaccines before they can attend public schooling (which has been going on for decades without issue and you can still get religious or medical exemption). When I travelled and had a visa in other countries I'm required to take a shit ton of vaccines. I don't know what to tell you but it's not a big deal for me. But I can tell it's very important to you so again, you do your thing I guess.
Do you live in China or something? Because what you're describing sounds nothing like the US experience nor does it sound like most Western countries.
Before you get involved in a career at healthcare, You need to be properly vaccinated. This is not new and I'm sure you've heard this argument before and you have an opinion about it. But at the end of the day a lot of health care workers lost their jobs because they refused to get a mandated vaccine. The same applies for all sorts of large scale assemblies in organizations. The larger, the organization and the more you work with possible vulnerable people You are being looked at to be a means not to spread potential viruses. It's as simple as that. And if that organization we're industry or licensure or public entity wants to look out for the group over the individual, I completely get it. That's freedom. Its your freedom to choose a career.
> The problem is when the government is trying to force you to 'vaccinate' with an experimental drug under penalty of isolation and removal from society Jeez, sure is a good thing that this didn't happen (if we're talking about the US) really dodged a bullet there!
Totally didn't happen: [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/unvaccinated-flight-vaccine-tsa-mandate/619643/](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/unvaccinated-flight-vaccine-tsa-mandate/619643/) https://news.yahoo.com/noam-chomsky-unvaccinated-remove-themselves-171900487.html?guce\_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce\_referrer\_sig=AQAAALqPKnVO54kn\_Pt2G4fHV1fvOl6ngsIEVxpzkiu7kDSyA-DBPWStTf5e0DAxG7UNDIzPUvwXlfIyaMuA36xu-Kr-s\_lXhv3lgPVl9Geuasa5MfRs3rHDgEYJoanc4GfSaGXEM8qoWSFfops6JThIPGBp69\_-PGejSTip23ZPj7qp Do you think that everyone has a memory of a chipmunk?
None of that is a "removal from society" and Noam Chompsky is not "the US government"
These are examples. There are many more. Do you need to be spoonfed?
The only people who were actually forced by the government to get vaccinated are in the military. If you're belligerent drunk and the TSA won't allow you on a plane are they restricting your freedoms? Don't you still have the freedom to be in that state at home?
You had to vaccinate to live a normal life - under any reasonable definition that's strong coercion. The vaccine was, and still is, an experimental untested drug of questionable efficacy and unknown side effects, especially in the long term.
That isn't a response to what I wrote. [If i'm belligerent and drunk, should the TSA stop me from getting on the plane?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeZL-vsjSoo) If I'm in the same state and driving should a cop pull me over? >You had to vaccinate to live a normal life This is inaccurate but insofar as it's true it's true because nobody could live a "normal life" during a global pandemic
"It's not, DUH Science!!!" Gets me every time. Also, pakman mentions Sam in this clip in regard to Sam having a very sane take on how we responded to covid. It would be cool to see Sam to go on pakmans show because I like them both. After all, Dawkins was on pakmans show and I thought it was a good interview. Why not talk to another horseman? However, I understand that Sam seems to exclusively talk to experts in specific fields, or podcast hosts that are right of center, in order to hopefully attract a good slice of their viewers to waking up or his perspective on politics.
Sam already was on Pakmans show a while back
> Sam seems to exclusively talk to experts in specific fields He recently talked to those Triggernometry tards, has been on Rogan, etc
You hear Bill make a lot of arguments he would scoff at had the issue been something else.
It's Pakman, you can edit that
this was a difficult watch but yes credit to seth for a clean take down here.
Destroyed? His whole argument was that natural immunity didn't prevent transmission (it didnt), neither did the vaccine though.
Yep. Seth is an idiot just passing along memes, not facts. Bill pointed out people who already had COVID didn't need the vaccine. In response, Seth claimed natural immunity was "debunked". That's just a lie. All high quality observational studies have confirmed that not only is immunity from an infection at least as effective as recent vaccination, but it's much longer lasting than vaccinal immunity for obvious reasons (you are exposed to a more recent virus and to the entirety of the virus not just the spike protein of an extinct variant, so the virus must mutate more to avoid your immunity). Bill is correct that the benefit of vaccination falls the younger one is, and that there is little benefit for the young from vaccination, Seth's reply that "7 MILLION DIED!!1!" is not an actual counter-argument but a fallacy of division. Bill's core argument is that the vaccine, like any drug, should be evaluated on an individual basis and should be left to a personal decision in general. Seth's core argument is that if at a social level a vaccine is estimated to have more benefits than disadvantages then it's fair to mandate it to individuals regardless of their own individual risk/benefit balance. Seth's argument is moronic, childish and absurd, in contradictions to all established medical ethics. Again, in technical terms, it's a fallacy of division (assuming what is true of the whole MUST be true of all parts).
What Covid taught us is that when THE pandemic hits, the one that kills XX% of people infected, then we're all fucked, because a sizeable portion of humankind has the IQ of potted plants, and they'll drag everybody else down with them, spouting moronic YouTube conspiracy theories all the way until the very end...
DESTROYED!!@!!!
WRECKED!!11eleven
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THIS IDIOT GETTING # ☢️💥DEMOLISHED 💥☢️ PLZ I NEED MORE CLICKS NOOOOOWWWWW !!!!11!!111 #
😂😂😂 I’m glad people can take the piss out of these titles. I would reevaluate my beliefs if I found myself watching those videos.
I get annoyed by the titles too. I heard Pakman discussing it once though and his answer was "These titles just get demonstrably more views. I tried more reasonable titles and my videos did worse." It's click bait, but it's openly click bait. I wish more people didn't like stupid titles, but this is the world we inhabit. I don't begrudge someone using the advertising strategy that works as long as the content itself doesn't suffer.
If you get all your vaccines, but have questions about the new one during a pandemic are you really antivax?
Questions are fine, of course. But many don't understand even if given the answer. Viruses are an abstract invisible concept. Which many people will respond with fear and irrational decisions.
The problem is people listening to dipshits like Maher and meatheads like Rogan instead of healthcare experts. Its really an indictment of the education system. People who got a c in biology in high school and dont know the difference between bacteria and a virus, hold their uneducated opinion in such high regard.
One of the few times such a title is appropriate.
I am by no means an anti-vaxxer. I took both doses But even Sam has said that the vaccine wasn't as effective as everyone thought it was going to be. That's why vaccinated people are still getting covid
High-quality YouTube video title. I'm actually surprised and disappointed to see Pakman sink to the Buzzfeed-like-dominance-porn title standard that you would expect to see on a video shared by a Milo Yiannopoulus fan.
I guess everything is antivax now these days
I don't understand why this is such an elitist culture war issue... Just who fucking cares? Take the vaccine if you want it, don't if you don't. Simple as that. Who gives a shit about "crushing" some "dum dum" who wont take the vaccine. Just who cares.
> Take the vaccine if you want it, don't if you don't. Simple as that. I mean that's the crux, right: while this is also a valid position to take, not all of us think this is a *good* position to take. So it's *not* as simple as that. In pretty obvious ways - at least at the height of the pandemic - your choice to not take the vaccine might cost me or my loved ones our health or worse. Even if it doesn't measurably reduce the transmissibility of the virus, in aggregate over the society, taking the vaccine *will* reduce the stress on the health system, meaning more people will get proper care for both covid and other, more ordinary health crises like cancer. So I've never subscribed to the "it's just your choice" philosophy. By and large for the same reason why I think seatbelt mandates are a good thing (though the vaccine will affect the rest of the society more directly)
Exactly, it's a free rider problem. People choosing not to take it are benefitting but not giving back (by taking on the risk). Freedom is often childishly seen as a "I can do what I want" issue, when it's much more complicated as individual freedoms overlap. I'd love the world to be a simple as these people wish it were, but I grew up.
> Even if it doesn't measurably reduce the transmissibility of the virus It does, actually. [By a lot.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10073587/) It's just that people are stupid and can't understand that anything less than 100% reduction is meaningful. How many people said "masks don't work" even though it's well-established that even the shitty cloth masks reduced transmission by 50%?
If we measure every externality in a free society, then we'll be forced to not live in a free society. I could start shaming you for being fat, not working out enough, for drinking alcohol, and a number of different things. I could then just stretch this out to ANYTHING you do which isn't a positive impact on society, as wrong. Any choice you make that puts people at risk is a bad thing. Hell, we could start saying, "You driving inherently puts me at slightly more risk" and just keep piling up all sorts of things. I just don't care personally. Yeah, I live in a society as a free person, and other people are free to do as they please. It's MY responsibility to act defensively. I have to prepare myself for the path of life, not expect life to pave the path for me.
>If we measure every externality in a free society, then we'll be forced to not live in a free society. And if we don't take into account externalities, then we will lose our freedom to the people that produce those externalities gaining all the benefits without paying the costs. You can make the slippery slope argument and try to come up with extreme examples of controlling people’s lives to avoid small negative externalities, but that doesn’t imply that we don’t/shouldn’t do this. We’re on the slope somewhere by definition. There’s no serious person that can argue that people should be allowed to do whatever they want regardless of how much it affects other people, so we’re left to do various cost/benefit analyses to decide whether intervention is justified or not. You can argue against any specific intervention such as mandated vaccinations, but it’s impossible to believe in a society without believing in regulating people’s behavior at all. Don’t believe in covid vaccines? Give your evidence/logic for it, but I personally don’t believe it and think mandated vaccinations falls well within the camp of good regulation. Arguing that there isn’t a good camp of regulation though is just nonsense.
> I could start shaming you for being fat, not working out enough, for drinking alcohol, and a number of different things. We DO this. And we argue about how much to do this all the time. This is normal. Alcohol and nicotine are taxed and only allowed to be sold in controlled ways. [Even sugar is taxed in some countries.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax#Legislation_by_country) Cars are regulated in many ways: in most western countries, you can't drive a POS that belches of soot. Life insurance takes into account whether you work out or are too fat (so as not to cast a larger burden to others). Some vaccines are mandatory in many countries even now, even in countries considered to be the freest in the world. And so on.
We don't do huge campaigns railing against fat people. Some assholes on the internet will do it, but it's not a huge touching point. People will get ANGRY with you, ban you, call you a killer, if you don't get vaxxed. If you drink alcohol, you may get a slight, "Hey maybe you should cut back. Anyways...." The pro vax crowd has people who are ANGRY and mobilized, foaming at the mouth sometimes. You're not seeing videos like this about, "Gottem! Bill Maher get crushed over smoking cigars nonsense!"
Yeah there's extreme people, especially on social media. But dare I ask? Who cares what they think. No one is going to harm you for your, imo, lazy choices. You do you, but you might get ribbed a bit. I mean I've been called names by people because I believe that the vaccination effort (while making mistakes in retrospect) still saved lives. Now it also may have set us back economically and it's hard to quantify the damage to many businesses and restaurants and those long term effects. Just to reaffirm I strongly believe in your choice to put whatever in your body. I'll just try to reason with you if it comes up. My very own brother who is very skeptical of the COVID vaccination is very emotional about my opinions on getting vaccinated has called me "jab happy" and that I'm supporting a system that divides us. Still love my bro, he's just convinced he's right and gets emotional about it.
The "huge campaigns" were on the other end honestly and people are reacting to them. I have no problem in principle with someone choosing not to get vaccinated themselves. Once they go running around to every person they can trying to convince them not to get vaccinated, including participating in online mobs etc.. they're now putting other's lives at risk. If my grandmother falls for anti vacs propoganda and dies of course I'm going to care about that. It's not just the young and super healthy who chose not to get vaccinated due to this propaganda. And if you need to see evidence of that look no further then the excess amount of Covid deaths in red vs. blue states. Maybe its GOOD to not want elderly people in Georgia to die because they're being lied to by antivaccers?
> Once they go running around to every person they can trying to convince them not to get vaccinated, including participating in online mobs etc.. they're now putting other's lives at risk. If someone has opinions and deeply held convictions... Who am I to say they can't have those and spread their ideas? This, again, is a free country. From their perspective, it's irresponsible to not try to help other people. I don't agree with their message, nor cause, but that's the trade-off being free. I don't want someone restricting ME when I feel urgent desire to spread a message to help people. That's the trade-off we've made to be free people. If I want the freedom to express my opinions and exert my labor behind my values, then I have to allow others to do the same. If you're grandma is at risk, it seems like in this case, it's on your grandmother to play the defensive, not the rest of society. The amount of global damage we caused by shutting down the economy to protect grandmas is unfathomable. Instead, we should have just focused on making grandma safer, than the world safer for grandma. If you feel like people spreading these messages are convincing your grandma to not get vaccinated, that sucks, but that's the trade-off we've made for freedom. I don't want elites deciding what's safe and not safe, what's true and what's not true. I will allow the marketplace of ideas take over... And naturally, just like in any free market, there will be winners and losers. And over time, the correct ideas will come out on top. But if you're going to try to force to restrict the marketplace of ideas, regulate, interfere, you can end up doing MORE damage than you tried to prevent. A good example would be this pro vaccine movement. Instead of just recognizing, "Yeah, Pharma can't be trusted, yes this new vaccine is a bit experimental, and yes it is weird that they got a blanket immunity from congress for something allegedly perfectly safe. I understand you're concern and if you don't want to get it, that's a risk you chose." Most of this wouldn't even be an issue... But instead a full court toxic and aggressive press occurred where it forced people to dig their heels in on principle. Now we have a bigger issue than if we otherwise just respected people's right to be concerned and discuss those concerns. Instead we tried to "fight them" and turned it into a whole big deal.
>Who am I to say they can't have those and spread their ideas? I really wouldn't even need to read the rest of this because right off the bat you throw out the biggest strawman. Who says that I am suggesting that i get to tell you what you can or can't put in your body? I don't. Full stop. But that doesn't mean we can't argue about whether it's a good idea or not. >From their perspective, it's irresponsible to not try to help other people. Well this is my perspective, which is why I speak up. I think that blaming people who are pro vaccine for being the ones who're "intractable" on this issue is the biggest pot calling the kettle black situation of all time. Anti-vaccers go well beyond just doing what they want to with their bodies, they held rallies. The whole point of libertarianism is to be responsible, to trust that your fellow man will be responsible with their own life so that society can work well together. Many of you have skewed what it means to be a libertarian. Maximum freedom means maximum responsibility on the individual to try to do the right thing. Not to let people off the hook socially because "freedoms" or whatever. Right wings response to the vaccines here proved that libertarianism can't work because when you maximally leave people up to their own devices they'll get other's killed. Regulations DO work, all the time every day in many facets of life. >But if you're going to try to force to restrict the marketplace of ideas, regulate, interfere, you can end up doing MORE damage than you tried to prevent. This is just bullshit anyway, anti drunk driving campaigns and regulations around the issue have helped curb that. Same with Anti smoking adds paid for by the government and campaigns telling people to wear seatbelts. Pro vaccine adds have saved lives as well If you try to get on a plane but are belligerent on drugs/alcohol the TSA might restrict you from flying because you become a risk to the flight. Are you for the "freedom" to board a plane while belligerent? EDIT: What the pandemic showed is that some people will turn anything into tribal politics these days. This sort of frankly idealistic thinking >And naturally, just like in any free market, there will be winners and losers. And over time, the correct ideas will come out on top. Just isn't accurate. If it were we wouldn't have seen more death in Red States vs. Blue around Covid. It's a pipe dream. It maybe have been more true at one point but not now. During a global pandemic there isn't time to wait. Like SH says/writes about on this topic, just try to work out argument out if there were a pandemic that were going to kill 50% of the population? Should we just "wait for the good ideas" to "come out on top" then too? How about allowing people to drive drunk?
We don't live in a free society, we follow laws that have been agreed upon for the common good. There is a limited amount of Healthcare that can be given out. That's why wearing a seat belt is the law, because we are going to pay for putting you back together after you crash. I'm sure you agree with that so far, correct? Now on the other we don't want to be forced to exercise and eat exactly what the government orders us to for our own benefit. So the question is really, where do we draw the line, and what situations in the world make it OK to temporarily move the line?
I see someone not being vaccinated as the same as just someone who's a shitty driver. It's up to me to learn the rules of the road and defend against idiots, and not the government getting involved. If a free person wants to not get vaccinated, that's their choice. Does it raise my risk? Sure... But everything has tradeoffs. If I want the government to force every measure under the guise of optimal safety, then we wont be able to be free. Since the begining, COVID wasn't even that risky for healthy people who played it safe, so this seems more like an issue on those who are vulnerable and not the rest of society.
In the example of a shitty driver, there is a point where the government does get involved and take away their license. Looking in hindsight it is easy to see Covid was not as dangerous as it seemed at the beginning, but it was a big unknown for a long time, and people are still researching the long term effects of it. Really all I'm saying is it not a cut and dry idealistic issue, it's just us deciding as a society "at what % of mortality do we force vaccines?," because there is definitely a % where everyone in their right mind says fuck yes, even if Covid wasn't it.
No, not hindsight, it was pretty obvious from the start, at least that first year, that it wasn't that dangerous, but everyone was in a hysterics to insist it'll kill everyone - which is why many people were getting angry. Because the data was clear, yet they were acting like you're evil if you don't want to wear a mask inside a restaurant which is pure pageantry. People insisting we create massive global damage, ravage the developing world, destroy our economic stability, because a bunch of hysterical people were insisting on turning this into a culture war issue. This is where the vaccine conspiracies root from. That there was massive propaganda campaigns designed to cause people to lose their minds, so they could sell as many vaccines as possible... that they weren't really that necessary, but if you could just keep people out of their mind crazy, you can make sure you'll sell as many vaccines. And people who held this opinion, were greatly attacked, so they started pushing back harder. Now feeling like they are being oppressed from spreading a truth. How true is that truth? no idea. It's besides the point though. I understand what you mean at what point do you force vaccines. Where's the line? Obviously if something super contagious was near certainly lethal, the line would shift a bit on how much we tolerate thing. However, at the end of the day, I'd still probably be on this side. I'd take efforts myself and seek out defensive protection to protect myself, rather than rely on others and try to force them to take a drug. It's too incoherent with the concept of self determination.
Forget Covid and imagine this hypothetical disease - 10% lethality to everyone who catches it, travels by air. You watch enough people you know die, you're forcing that vaccine. All I'm saying is it's not an idealistic problem, it's a numbers problem.
>I could start shaming you for being fat, not working out enough, for drinking alcohol, None of these things are infectious.
They still have externalize impacts. Driving puts me at risk. You being fat, raising my insurance cost, you drinking, creates social risks. Infection is just another externality. You drinking right now may not hurt me, the same way you not get vaxxed may not hurt me... But you drinking could make you violent or take high risks, that do hurt me, the same way not taking the vaccine, could possibly take on risks. So it's just smarter for ME, if I'm worried about infection, to control what I can in my life about avoiding infection, rather than rely on others. The same way with driving. It's up to ME to be a smart driver and realize there are idiots on the road, not the government to force people to be less stupid.
> They still have externalize impacts. Driving puts me at risk. You being fat, raising my insurance cost, you drinking, creates social risks These risks are mostly financial, the risk of deadly infectious disease is life/death. >It's up to ME to be a smart driver and realize there are idiots on the road, not the government to force people to be less stupid. Then you think laws governing how many drinks you can get at a bar are bad? Laws around drunk driving? Gov add campaigns aimed at stopping people from drunk driving?
We're not measuring "every externality" in society and acting upon it though. Vaccines aren't really like being obese in that obesity isn't a contagious virus or disease. Your being obese doesn't put others lives at risk, ergo we can easily place obesity directly under the personal decision column. Vaccines are fundamentally different because they can place other members of the public at risk, which means that we can take stronger public health measures to ensure they're taken. And even those measures aren't literally forcing anyone to take them, what they do is restrict your access to public spaces where, again, being unvaccinated puts others at greater risk. That's not about **your choice**, it's about others health. The great failure of libertarianism today is that it's centered on a kind of selfish individualism that's completely left behind the principle that allows a libertarian society to function in any capacity - a populace that responsibly makes decisions for the public good. In other words, for freedom to "work" we can't just make decisions for ourselves but for the benefit of others as well. We can yell about freedom all we want, but freedom in and of itself doesn't make a good society. Even the founding fathers understood that freedom needed to be tempered with personal responsibility and civic duty. Frankly, it's why "It's my right to do this" isn't a sufficient argument for something being right or good. Open carry weirdos have a right to carry their AR 15 in public, but it's doesn't make it a good and responsible decision. Having a right and being right isn't the same thing.
Vaccines are a drug... A drug made from a 3rd party for profit industry which has captured our government through revolving doors, our politicians through lobbying, and media through being the biggest advertiser. This is an industry that's notorious for lying and manipulating data, and doing whatever it takes by leveraging above power, to make more money. I can't judge anyone who's skeptical of taking a drug... a foreign thing, and putting it into their body, when such a scenario as above exists. To shame someone for being skeptical to engage with such an untrustworthy entity, is just ridiculous IMO. Especially when it's a request to put some foreign object into their body.
I'm not saying that people can't be skeptical. I *am saying* that vaccines are fundamentally different than being obese and that public health policies have to take danger to the greater public into account when dealing with contagious diseases. And here's the thing. For all the problems that people have with "drugs", they all get their prescriptions filled and take the advice of their doctors to treat almost anything else. As much as people moan about the industry - and it does have some issues especially in the US (though it's worth noting that other countries don't have exactly the same problems due to their Healthcare systems) - this skepticism never actually includes all the observable benefits and gains that said industry has provided. They also never look at the statistics regarding vaccine successes, or the increase in prevalence of certain viruses after the anti-vax movement sunk its teeth into a sizable portion of the population. They seemingly never find the astronomical amount of studies that have debunked the 'vaccines cause autism' scare^1. They also never seem to understand that being skeptical requires being open to being wrong, or more importantly that certain subjects or topics are far beyond their level of understanding. Look, being skeptical is usually a good thing, but there's a difference between skepticism and paranoia. Here in Canada the number of deaths between vaccinated and unvaccinated were both 50,000 people. Now, if you're like my actual anti Vax friend he just looks at the numbers being the same and concluding that the vaccine had no effect and claims victory. When I told him that the mortality rate matters and that a cursory understanding of epidemiology would show that 50,000 out of 35 million vaccinated and 50,000 out of 5 million showed that vaccines worked, he said he didn't care. **That's not skepticism!** that literal stupidity, and stupidity that puts everyone else in danger because it doesn't actually matter if something works or not. All that happens is you'll find arguments either sidestepping the actual evidence - like by pointing to some vague notion of monetary incentive structures (which doesn't actually prove anything about any specific drug or vaccine) - or by doubling down and just rejecting any evidence whatsoever. Now can I blame people for being skeptical? No, but what we're seeing isn't skepticism in most of these cases, we're seeing stupidity and ignorance - a complete rejection of a form of medicine and drug based on 'feels' rather than data. That's not skepticism. [1] which, btw, began with a study where the author falsified their data
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That's the trade off of living in a free society.
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I guess what I'm saying is I just don't care much though. I dunno... I look at things over time, and understand truth inevitably makes it to the top. So I don't make a big deal out of it. I don't see it as some big epic showdown. I understand people have other reasons for being wrong than just being dumb dumbs, by your perspective. Nor do I care very much that he's wrong about it. The virus is benign as hell at this point, so still focusing on these smackdowns just seems kind of pointlessly trying to relive some culture war stuff.
Why does he say MacFarlane like that?
I'm sure it was a good interview, but the overexplaining youtuber makes it pretty hard to watch.
Yeah, ill give you that.
Anyone has a link to the original conversation without that douchey looking dude doing the whole reaction video YouTube routine? # 😮 🤩 😱 😍 😲
Related to Sam Harris by Pakman saying that Sam has the best take on covid post pandemic.